Green is the new orange.

Arrow may have had its serious ups and downs over the past six years, but I’ll say this for the series - it’s never afraid to reinvent itself when things aren’t working out. “Inmate 4587” marks what is easily the biggest, most sweeping status quo change for the series yet. Oliver Queen is locked behind bars, his family is in witness protection and Star City is dealing with a serious lack of costumed protectors.

It’s great to see Arrow making some sweeping changes after the mess that was Season 6. Sure, that season ended on a pretty strong note (once it decided to finally start giving Ricardo Diaz the attention he deserved), but that hardly made up for the months of plodding, formulaic storytelling leading up to that point. This new approach feels like just the adrenaline boost Arrow needed. Though, predictably, the revamped status quo isn’t without its problems in the premiere.

All other things being equal, Ollie’s prison ordeal brings with it no shortage of great character drama and brutal fight scenes. To paraphrase Jonathan Banks’ character in Better Call Saul, there’s nothing a superhero fears more than being locked up with the same people he put away. And right out of the gate, we get a great hero/villain reunion as Ollie butts heads with Ben Turner, Danny Brickwell and Derek Sampson.

Quick sidebar - it was a weird shock seeing Michael Jai White’s Turner back in the fold, given that his character was killed off in the Arrow Season 2.5 comic. I take it that series is no longer considered to be part of official Arrowverse canon now? On the other hand, it’s pretty obvious the Suicide Squad were only eliminated because of DC’s ridiculous stance on allowing multiple live-action incarnations of their characters to exist simultaneously. If ignoring the comic is the price we have to pay for more Suicide Squad stories, then so be it.

Ollie’s prison ordeal is easily the most compelling aspect of the new season so far. Stephen Amell is doing a great job of playing Ollie as a man living inside himself, afraid to rock the boat even slightly for fear of adding more time onto his sentence. He’s a man full of repressed fury, and it doesn’t help that his desire for freedom is already clashing against his innate sense of heroism.

And again, the fight scenes were something to behold. Director James Bamford is unrivaled when it comes to crafting intricate, hard-hitting action sequences. This episode took full advantage of Ollie as a cornered fighter with no bows or gadgets on which to rely. Instead, it’s all grungy, bone-cracking brawling. The shower fight definitely stood out this week, as did the satisfying moment when Ollie finally snapped and made his stand in the exercise yard. It’s funny to think that Brickwell used to be a big-shot capable of supporting multi-episode storylines, and now he gets abruptly taken down with a book to the throat.

Thankfully, this looks to be a lasting conflict for Ollie. Where The Flash has always had a problem with introducing dramatic season finale cliffhangers and then rapidly resolving them, Ollie’s prison ordeal is obviously going to dominate the early portion of the season (if not longer). Why mess with a good thing, especially when Arrow may be the closest we ever get to that canceled Super Max movie becoming a reality?

Unfortunately, the storylines set outside the prison don’t quite measure up. Even though pretty much every member of the former Team Arrow is in a very different place this year, these changes generally don’t hold the same weight as Ollie’s incarceration. This episode has me questioning whether some of these characters even need to remain in play any longer. What purpose does Curtis serve now? Why should we even buy the notion of Black Siren becoming Star City’s DA? The newfound tension between Rene and Dinah also seems forced, especially considering it’s coming right on the heels of the Team Arrow civil war from last season. The time may have come to trim the fat when it comes to the ensemble cast. Too many of those scenes served only to derail the momentum of Ollie's story.

As for Felicity and William, their subplot started out well enough but ended on a really strange note. Felicity’s current character arc has the right blend of humor (genius hacker stuck working a thankless coffee shop job) and drama (a wife separated from her husband and caring for her adopted child). All of that took a bizarre turn once Diaz unexpectedly reared his head. Given that that scene unfolded right after one of Ollie’s nightmares, it was tough to tell at first whether what we were seeing was actually real. And then to transition directly from Diaz threatening to torture Felicity to her returning to Star City and reuniting with Ollie seemed a very wonky storytelling choice. It definitely feels like there’s a missing chunk of story there. Maybe that’s intentional, but the whole thing felt very awkwardly handled.

And then there’s the return of the island flashbacks. Part of me had hoped we were done with those for good after Season 5. Blowing up Lian Yu was a very literal way of discarding the past and moving forward. But if the flashbacks are going to return, revealing them to actually be flash-forwards and giving the series a Lost/Westworld-worthy twist is certainly one way of shaking up the formula. This is a far more interesting way of reintegrating Colton Haynes’ Roy Harper into the series than simply having him rejoin Team Arrow. It also opens up many new doors for William.

The main issue the series is going to need to address here is why and how these flash-forwards are relevant to what’s happening in the present. Showrunner Beth Schwartz revealed that this storyline is set roughly 20 years in the future and that it’s going to continue playing out for the remainder of Arrow’s time on the air. So what’s the connective thread? Why is this story better as a recurring flash-forward subplot than as fodder for a separate “Green Arrow Beyond” spinoff? It seems like a story worth telling, but I also can’t help but remember how pointless and detached the flashbacks started to become after the first couple seasons.

The Verdict

Arrow's Season 7 premiere kicks off the most significant status quo change in the series' history. Some of these sweeping changes are already working in the show's favor. Ollie's prison ordeal is already a source of great character drama and fantastic action. The new twist on the island flashbacks is also intriguing, though it raises concerns about how present and future will stay intertwined. The main problem right now is that the supporting cast and their subplots seem to be merely getting in the way of Ollie's story. There are too many characters without enough to do right now.